• Your centrefold (3 December) suggests that Barack Obama addressed a sea of white faces and three black faces at Westpoint military academy when announcing his escalation of the war. I wonder what the proportion of black to white service personnel is in the war zone.

• Next year's World Cup hosts, South Africa, have been drawn in the group stage against France, Mexico and Uruguay – exactly as the hosts and eventual winners were in 1966. Time for a bet on Bafana Bafana?

Paul Dennehy

Enfield, Middlesex

• Why on earth isn't the film industry bankrupt? You reviewed 11 movies in Friday's Film & Music – 11 opening in a single week – of which only two received three stars, and one four stars. Clearly a truckload of bad movies are being made, which no one (other than your overworked reviewer) will ever see. The mind boggles at exactly who these unwanted movies are made for.

NE White

Orpington, Kent

• In the narcissistic competition between two members of the clergy (Letters, 4 and 5 December), our lady vicar, with due political correctness, makes a claim for one-up-personship. Surely theological correctness suggests that it should be one-up-parsonship.

Stephen Davies

Sandbach, Cheshire

• Fair trade and Eccles cakes cannot be construed as a raisin d'être (Letters, 5 December), as both are currant affairs.